Here's the second half of the filing, plus that box in the left has filing in it. I somehow need to get all of this done before June 20. Wouldn't it be great it filing was like moving and you could buy a bunch of pizza and beer and get all your friends to help you?

Wardrobe

This week's episode of Battlestar Galactica was fabulous but I'm having a hard time with Number 8's wardrobe. Seriously, capri pants?

This is part one of my filing at the office. There are four more piles almost equal to this on a table behind the photographer.

I have confidence that some day, maybe this weekend, I will come up with a decent post.

After another long busy week, today is a major goof-off day. I'm going to have a massage and then I'm going to see the new Narnia movie.

Someone Else's Bad News
I'm apparently trapped in some sort of time warp since I've been on the wrong date since Saturday. On Monday there was a moment where I had to whack my head against the desk trying to clarify which day we were on. Usually on Mondays I have it together.

I just got back from the restroom and noticed I have terrible VPL today. (There's a giant mirror in there.) I'm celebrating by finishing off this box of Wheat Thins (Big).

A couple of weeks ago (at home) we received some mail addressed to 2 names we've never heard of but with our address hand written on the envelope. It was from a property management company and the best I could tell without opening it, it was an eviction notice. I assumed they'd written the address wrong and marked return to sender.

I didn't think too much about it except last week we got a piece of mail addressed to someone else (I don't know if it's the same person because I didn't pay attention the first time) and from what I could tell by shaking it around and trying to see in that window on the front, it was about a returned check. There was a return address but no business name. Maybe the bank? I made a note of the name this time before returning to sender.

It's hard to imagine the two items aren't related and I'm wondering if this is the beginning of some sort of pain in the ass for us or just a random data misfire.

Stinging Workers

This weekend I did a bit of research on yellowjackets and I found the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Is it real? Here is part of it:

2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.

I was stung by a yellowjacket a long time ago and it hurt really bad. I was a fully formed adult at the time and I'm not excessively wimpy about pain and I really wanted to sit down and cry. Even though the sound of wailing children is really annoying, don't you sometimes envy them? Haven't you ever been tired and rundown and nothing is going the way you want it to and wished you could just throw your head back and shriek in the middle of the grocery store? I know I have.

I'm glad adults don't do this because the social boundaries that keep everyday life tolerable are disintegrating fast enough as it is. There was an article in the NYT on Sunday about how liberating young people find it to talk about how much money they make with each other. Good for them. I don't talk about how much money I make with my husband. I think the world is just fine with things people don't talk about. Have you ever had one of those awkward conversations where someone you met 5 minutes ago starts telling you about their cysts?

Hm, I'm getting off track here. Back to the stingy thing: for some reason I thought that honeybee stings were negligible. I guess I've never been stung by one.

I finished another story this weekend which was why I did the yellowjacket research. It's hard to have a meal outside at my folks' house because of the yellowjackets but the university extension had a great tip which involved hanging a fish over a tub of water. I can't wait to try it.

This has nothing to do with my story. The story is one I've worked on and off on for quite some time and it's not a terrible story but I'm not sure it's especially creative or has a point but I'm trying to get in the habit of finishing things. Somewhere I have a quote from Ray Bradbury where he said he'd written at least 600 stories but only published 150 (made up numbers because I don't know where the quote is and besides, it's probably 20 years old and he's probably written another 600 stories since then) and he was still learning. At the rate I'm going, it'll take me 85 years to hit 600 stories.

We Got the Beet

I know this is a photo of carrots and doesn't match my title but I usually never plant carrots and these were so cute that I had to try them.

Yesterday I put a garden in. I'm know I'm going to be gone for six weeks but I can't do nothing. I did decide to skip the tomatoes, mostly because Sunset magazine reminded me that you aren't supposed to plant them in the same place every year. I don't plant them in the exact same spot but always in the same general plot so maybe a year off would be good for everyone.

The other reason I went ahead and planted is I bought a bunch of seeds before I knew I would be gone. Plus I found a stash from last year which included about 5 envelopes of beet seeds. I mixed a ton of beet, turnip, carrot, chard and lettuce green seeds in a little plastic dish and then scattered them over half the garden. Then I went to find a rake. When I came back there was already a cheeky bird, going to town. I raked everything around.

Then I went and found all my peas and lemon cucumbers. The past two or three years these have done nothing for me so I planted them all in the hope something will take. I used the same scatter method. I have cages but there are tons of wasps around the shed and I'm afraid to go in there right now so I haven't set the cages out for the peas, should they decide to grow.

If you've arrived at this post looking for gardening advice, I'd suggest you move on. I don't think you'll find anything to help you here.

I raked the whole plot and shoved a few wayward seeds under with my fingers and went in the house and announced to Bob that just about the time I leave he will have all the turnips and beets he can handle. This is a joke because Bob will eat vegetables but the idea of him harvesting root vegetables from the backyard is ridiculous. At least the bugs will have something to eat.

Half Dome



I've been to Yosemite two times. The first time I was very small. How old do I look in this photo? A few months? My Tante Hilla came from Germany and they all did a trip of California-y things. I know they also went to Hearst Castle. Or we, I should say. I've only been to Hearst Castle that one time and remember, well, nothing.

This was in 1964 so make sure to dig the little bit of the cars you can see. As I was preparing this it occurred to me that this was probably Tante Hilla's first visit to California and the occasion was to see me.



We went again when I was in high school. There's no major point I'm making here, just falling back on old photos for today's content.

In other news, I just clued in to the fact that Prince Capsian comes out on May 16. That's less than one month away. I thought I had to wait until December.

To celebrate I did a quick detour to watch the official trailer, fan teaser (first typed fan taser, I think there's a joke in there somewhere), production blog (nice accent, sounds like Narnier), moneybags slap themselves on the back promo, and the dreamy Prince Caspian promo. Didn't the book Prince Caspian have the faintest whiff of wuss? I must remember that wrong.

Tulip Bandit Strikes Again



This is what we saw when we got home from the grocery store last night.

I can't believe I thought tulips didn't last very long. These have been going strong for at least a couple of weeks although they're looking a tad straggly at this point. It's hard not to think someone is messing with me.

Here's the before photo again.



I don't know what to think. These flowers are right by my front door. My neighbor has a big patch of pretty tulips in her yard right by the street. I checked and no one has been picking any of those. If it was kids, why would they just target these?

I'm not really outraged as much as curious. Did the same person come back for more or did someone else see these and think they needed to take some home? I haven't seen any in this color around. I'm going to dig them up in the fall and put them out back with the pink ones. I'll get some more daffodils for the front.

This morning I did a tons of errands. I put on my work clothes so I could pick up some manure and stuff for the garden that I'm planting even though I'm going to be gone for 6 weeks. I know the weather is supposed to be doodoo all weekend but I figured there would be time to sneak out and do a little work.



Right when I got to the garden store it started pouring rain and everything was covered and I said screw it. Better luck next weekend.